Strangers
by ObnoxiousSpontaneousCombustion
Summary: Fred and George observe the three paranoid teenagers while Percy, Annabeth and Grover observe the weirdly-dressed redheaded twins. Read their thoughts on each other from afar in Muggle/wizarding London and, years later, in New York. (I promise it's not as horribly dull as I made it sound.)
1. Strangers On The Tube

Fred and George Weasley were on the Muggle tube for the first time in their lives.

It was an altogether alien experience for them, with the faulty turnstiles and the separate cars that, disappointingly, were the exact same size that they appeared. They were being shoved around in the crowd, occasionally getting skewed glances from some of the passengers. They couldn't understand why; they'd dressed in stylish Muggle attire: hair done up with gel, jeans double-cuffed and a form fitting back tank top. Hermione had described it when she'd been telling them about an American musical called _Slime_, or something similar.

"When's this metal coffin stopping?" complained George.

"We have three stops left, and then we switch and get on for another two bloody stops," answered Fred glumly, gripping onto the pole so had his knuckles were turning white.

"Brilliant," sighed George.

"I'm scared to death of this thing. It's amazing there aren't more deaths because of this; whoever made this is a right tosser and wants us all to die."

"Three more stops, Fred, and then we can have our feet on solid ground."

"I can't believe this. If only mum had agreed to let us go, we'd be there by now. She thought it wasn't safe for us to go to London by Floo or by car; well now look at the state we're in! We're trapped in a metal box with hundreds of Muggles without the faintest idea of where we're going."

"Oh, the irony!"

The train squeaked and scraped to a halt, and half the people in the compartment poured out, giving the twins some breathing room. Only a few people came on; all of them were teenagers. There was a blonde girl, a boy with a goatee and curly brown hair and another boy with messy black hair and green eyes. They were obviously Muggles, because of the way they were dressed, though Fred and George found it kind of odd that the curly-haired boy's shoes were on the wrong feet… it must be a Muggle trend.

Annabeth, Grover and Percy had just walked into the London tube.

Annabeth and Percy were really nervous about navigating the subway in a foreign city and Grover hated being underground in the first place, so that made for a pretty shaky crew. Percy was nervously toying with his pen, Annabeth was tapping her foot on the floor and Grover was using all of his willpower trying not to take a bite out of Percy's t-shirt.

It was only them and about seven other people in the entire compartment, which made Annabeth relieved because they wouldn't have to fight the crowd and Percy nervous because they couldn't get lost in the crowd if someone decided to pull a knife on them – or worse, morph into a vicious demigod-killing monster. Hey, weirder things had happened to them in the past week that they'd been in London, including one of the bearskin guys morphing into a ten-foot-long snake with an Afro.

It didn't look like they had any potential mythical monsters on their hands, though. Most of the people on the train with them were obviously mortals, and weren't paying the slightest bit of attention to them. But there were two redheaded guys in their teens that looked like they'd just stepped out of _Grease_ who were looking at them a little weirdly. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but Percy doubted that these two were headed for a costume party. They didn't look too intimidating though; in fact, they looked just as lost as they did.

Fred and George were nervously counting down the minutes until they had to switch trains. Now that most of the people had gone, it was easier for them to breathe and they could even sit down if they wanted, but neither of them dared let go of the pole for fear of falling onto the grimy compartment floor.

They were a little suspicious of the curly-haired teenager, because he'd started to nervously chew on a fork that he'd pulled out of his back pocket, but then again it could be some weird Muggle sweet they'd never heard of. Actually, it could be a good thing to add to their Skiving Snackboxes. A small grin appeared on their faces and they each made a mental note to tell the other about their brilliant idea later, assuming they made it out of the metal Muggle death machine alive.

Percy was a little suspicious of the redheaded twins, but he was strung out from their encounter with the bearskin-guy-turned-killer-snake. They were both smiling slightly, not in a very sinister way but it reminded him of the look the Stoll brothers wore when they'd just stolen something of yours. And while that's not exactly crazy-half-blood-killing-monster sinister, it can be pretty bad if what they've stolen is your only weapon.

But since he had Riptide in hand and wasn't carrying anything else that was worth stealing, he shrugged off his worries about the two ginger John Travoltas and turned to Annabeth.

"Have you ever seen _Grease_?"

"What?" she asked clearly distracted. She hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in ages, and it was starting to show.

"Have you ever seen _Grease_, the musical? You know, with John Travolta and that blonde chick…"

"Olivia Newton John," piped in Grover.

"Yeah. I know Grover's seen it. He's seen basically every bad chick flick-y musical there is to see…"

"Hey!"

"Come on, G-man. You know it's true."

"But _Grease_ isn't bad! It's very well done! It's _Grease 2 _that's bad…" Percy grinned.

"You've seen _Grease 2_?" Grover blushed.

"Well, you know, um, to make fun of it. With some friends."

"Yeah, _riiiiiiight_."

"You guys are ridiculous," sighed Annabeth, smiling despite herself. "Come on, we're getting off at the next stop."

The Weasleys let out small "oh"s of recognition. _Grease_. That's right. The train lurched and squeeled to a halt, and they would have gone flying across the compartment but for the metal pole they were gripping onto as if their lives depended on it. The three teenagers hopped off the tube, looking very relieved. Only one of the boys cast a second glance back at them. He gave the twins a brief nod and an awkward smile before disappearing into the crowd at the platform with his friends.

"They seemed like a nice enough lot," commented George once the train started moving again.

"Yeah. Americans, it sounded like. I wonder what they're doing here."

"Did you notice that one of them was eating a fork?"

"I suppose it's some kind of Muggle sweet. Actually, I was thinking that maybe we could…"

"…make some for our Skiving Snackboxes," interrupted George.

"Jinx! That was my idea!"

"Too late now, Freddie. Come on, time to get off this thing and switch trains."


	2. Strangers In A Bar

_**A/N: To be perfectly honest, I never planned on updating this fic. But since everybody seemed to want an update, here it is. By the way, I have fact-checked and done research on the bar in question, so I'm pretty sure that my description is accurate. If not, feel free to tell me so. Oh, and I'm playing off the fact that since Percy, Annabeth and Grover aren't regular Muggles they're not repelled as efficiently by anti-Muggle charms. _**Expect more soon! **_– SK**_

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><p>Percy, Annabeth and Grover were running away from a pair of crazy men. They weren't sure if they were monsters or just gangsters, but either way they had to run. The three of them were sprinting down Charing Cross Road, weaving through people, too out of breath to say "excuse me". Grover dared a glance over his shoulder and saw that their pursuers were hot on their trail. He tapped Annabeth's shoulder and cut to the right into a broken-down old shop, hoping Percy – who was a little behind them because he was worn out from trying to drown their assailants – would follow.<p>

The shop was an odd one, to say the least. It wasn't even a shop at all. It was actually a bar, with every kind of alcohol imaginable lining the wall behind it and a row of people sitting at it. Percy was starting to think they'd made a mistake in coming in; he was sure they'd throw them out because they were two young, but they needed a hiding spot and so far, nobody looked like they were about to arrest them.

"Should we sit down?" whispered Grover to Annabeth. She was scanning the area as if trying to calculate the odds of it being a trap. Eventually she just shrugged and looked at Percy, who shrugged as well. There were no minors at the bar as far as they could see, but there was another room in the back, a dining room or restaurant by the look of it, with families and kids bustling around. With another three helpless shrugs, they walked in.

Fred and George were sitting at their usual table in the dining area of the Leaky Cauldron, chatting with young second-year fans from Hogwarts about their new products. They each had a tall glass of Butterbeer in front of them and were pointing to different areas on a large hand-drawn diagram of their Gargling Gargoyles prototype. It had taken them a couple of months to perfect the esthetic, but the practicality of it was far from finished. It still spat more than it gargled and the wings wouldn't move properly.

But their fans from Hogwarts didn't have to know that.

"See, here's our signature," said Fred, pointing at the tiny mark on the gargoyle's foot.

"Yeah. To be perfectly honest, we spent more time on our signature than anything else," added George. Fred jabbed him in the ribs. "What? I'm just being honest."

"No, not that. Look behind you." George turned around and saw the three kids they'd seen in the tube the other day cautiously walking into the dining room. They looked like they couldn't believe their eyes. The boy with curly hair was blinking rapidly and the girl rubbed her eyes to make sure she as seeing right. The black-haired one looked extremely uncomfortable, had pulled a pen out of his pocket and was toying nervously with it, flipping it through his fingers.

"That's odd," commented George.

"Yeah… I could have sworn they were Muggles…"

"I mean, look how they're dressed."

"Maybe they were just trying to blend in?" suggested Fred, though he didn't look entirely convinced himself.

"They have to be Muggles… see that? He's got a Muggle pen. And I don't see a wand about any of them."

"So you think they just waltzed into a rotten old shop for the fun of it?"

"Well they don't seem like your average Muggle lot, do they? Besides, wouldn't the door be locked for them if they were?"

"I suppose. They're odd ones, at any rate. The girl's pretty though, isn't she?"

Annabeth didn't like the feel of this place at all. It seemed like a nice enough restaurant and as far as she could tell there were no monsters in its midst, but the people were really weird… They all seemed to be wearing bright colors with crazy hats or at the very least carry around a stick.

But they were all hungry and tired and they weren't exactly about to walk back out where two nutty guys were after their blood, so weird restaurant-bar with weirdly dressed people it was. Percy carefully made his way over to the nearest table and motioned for the others to follow.

"What's it going to be then?" asked a tall, thin man with a thick cockney accent seconds after they'd sat down. They were all a little startled because he'd seemed to appear out of nowhere. "Well don't look so scared, lads. I'm not a werewolf or anything." Percy assumed this was a reference to how bad _Twilight_ was – he was, after all, a dyslexic teenage guy, so naturally he hated it – and smiled briefly and cautiously at the waiter.

Annabeth smiled slightly as well, but for an entirely different reason. It made her smile just seeing Percy smile. It was embarrassing but true. He had a sort of lopsided awkward grin that made her feel warm all over… no matter how much danger they were in or how much she wished she didn't notice how cute he looked when he was smiling, that grin always made her grin too. She wasn't sure if she loved or hated him for it.

"Um… we don't know yet… could you give us a minute?"

"Not a problem, call me when you've decided." And at that the waiter strolled over to a table at the back.

"He's a little weird, don't you think?" whispered Annabeth.

"He doesn't smell like monster," said Grover, "But this whole place kind of seems…" He knit his eyebrows together and peered over Percy's head at the back of the dining room.

"What?" asked Annabeth, fearing the worst. Was it monsters? Was it gangsters? Was it both?

"It's those two guys! The ones that dressed like Danny Zuko…"

"Who's Danny Zuko?" asked Percy.

"That guy in _Grease_! Remember? We saw them on the subway." Annabeth and Percy spun around simultaneously, nearly breaking their necks. Grover was right. Only this time they looked more like the rest of the people in the bar than ginger John Travoltas.

Fred and George were showing off their newest additions to the Skiving Snackbox – Convulsion Cutlery – to Tom, the owner, explaining the effects and side-effects in detail – though they sugar-coated some of the worse ones quite a bit. He was very impressed, and told them that his cousin knew someone at Zonko's who might be willing to talk to them. The twins were ecstatic; getting their products into Zonko's would be a huge burst of publicity. They almost felt giddy at the thought.

"I'll do my best to convince my cousin," said Tom, "But I'm sure he'll go for it. I remember when we were your age, we spent ages trying to come up with this sort of thing…"

As Tom went for a dull and seemingly interminable stroll down memory lane, George glanced over his shoulder at the mysterious teenagers from the tube, only to see that their table was empty with suspicious bits of metal – fork tines, by the look of it – littering the floor. They were very odd, clearly.

Or maybe they were just American.


	3. Strangers In The Dark

Percy, Annabeth and Grover had tried and failed to IM camp three times, and were getting increasingly nervous as night fell. With no place to stay and no light, they'd be Monster Munch if they didn't get in touch with Chiron soon.

Percy was starting to wish they'd just sucked it up and stayed at that weird place on Charing Cross Road; the people may have looked like complete freak shows, but at least they weren't monsters and had food. His stomach growled on cue, but he struggled to ignore it as Annabeth fished around her enormous backpack for extra drachmas.

"Got anything?" asked Grover. Annabeth swore in Ancient Greek, which he took as a no.

"I could have sworn I'd packed at least twenty!"

"You sure you don't have any?" asked Percy, "Did you check your back pockets?" Annabeth stared daggers at him.

"No, Percy. I've spent ten minutes looking for drachmas and I _completely forgot_ about my back pockets." Percy realized he'd been stupid and tactfully ignored her biting sarcasm.

"Um, right. In that case we should probably figure out where in Hades we are." The three of them looked around, straining their eyes to see, but it they didn't know London very well in the first place and it was almost pitch-black out. Grover didn't smell any monsters, and as far as he could tell the only things they should be afraid of were mortal gangs and the occasional mental asylum escapee.

"Uh, Percy? Not happening."

Annabeth was trying to keep calm and come up with a practical solution. But since she couldn't come up with any, it was getting harder for her to stay cool and not kick something. Hard. She grudgingly admired Percy's levelheadedness and was starting to think that his brain wasn't _quite_ so full of kelp as she'd originally thought…. unless that was what made him so levelheaded, in which case she'd need to borrow some.

"Annabeth?" asked Percy.

"What?"

"Got any ideas?" She rolled her eyes.

"I can't do _all_ the thinking around her, Seaweed Brain."

"So… no ideas?"

"Give me a second."

Fred and George Weasley were stumbling down a narrow street, tripping over each other's feet and giggling loudly. They'd seriously overdosed on prototypes of their Giggling Gum and were starting to experience the side effects they'd noticed when they'd tested it on Ron: disorientation, dizziness and feeling ever so slightly drunk.

"Hey, hey George!" said Fred more loudly than was necessary, "I've got one: Why did the basilisk cross the road?"

"I don't know, Fred! Why _did_ the basilisk cross the road?"

"It didn't cross; it slithered!" This caused the two boys to start laughing hysterically, leaning on each other for support. Neither of them was paying any attention to their surroundings, and George nearly ran into a lamppost.

"Woah! Who put that there?" he asked, pointing at the lamppost. "It wasn't there a second ago! It just appeared… it was almost like magic!" Fred suddenly burst out laughing again, falling onto George who then rammed into the lamppost. Soon, they were both doubled over with laughter, making a huge racket in the dark street.

Percy, Annabeth and Grover heard laughter up the street. Annabeth did a quick calculation and decided it was probably safe, Percy uncapped Riptide and mentally crossed his fingers that it was just a bunch of kids and Grover immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were monsters.

"What are you doing, Percy?" he demanded, "Are you crazy?"

"They might be friendly," he answered unconvincingly.

"Friendly? What friendly people walk around the streets of London in the dark?"

"What about us, Grover?" asked Annabeth.

"We're tourists! We don't count."

As the laughter got louder and more distinct, Annabeth was starting to make out the outlines of two teenage boys stumbling around and running into stuff. They were giggling asininely, and didn't look particularly dangerous… in fact they looked kind of familiar…

"Hey, Annabeth," whispered Percy, "See those guys over there?" She nodded. "Should I know about them from Chiron's history class? They look sort of…"

"Familiar? Yeah, I thought so too. But as far as I know, there aren't any monsters that look like…" she squinted to see better, but it was getting dark very quickly and all that she could make out were the vague shapes of two boys.

"They don't _seem_ dangerous," said Percy, still not sure whether to trust them or not. They wouldn't have been the first to look perfectly normal before morphing into something crazy and man-eating. Besides, he couldn't see them very well in the first place, so it probably wasn't a good idea to make an assumption based on shadows. "I think we should get out of their way just in case," he suggested. Grover agreed heartily with this plan; he wasn't ready to take any chances, even if they smelled nothing like monsters. In fact, they smelled pretty strongly of bubblegum…

Fred and George managed to figure out approximately where they were, sort of, when they side effects of the Giggling Gum were starting to wear off.

"I think we're sort of… north… west… ish," said Fred, trying to focus. "We may be a little southeast of the Leaky Cauldron."

"I don't know," admitted George, "I can't really see… I think it says "Stacey Street"…"

"That's in Muggle London isn't it? Possibly…?"

"Probably. We should go back to the Keaky Lauldron… Leaky Cauldron."

"Which way is it?"

"Southeast of northwest-ish, you said, right?"

"Then southwest it is! Come on, George, let's get a move on."

The twins stumbled further up the street, inching further and further away from the Leaky Cauldron and deeper and deeper into Muggle London, giggling as they went, leaning against each other for support and subsequently tripping over curbs and banging into stuff. They both made a mental note to warn their customers about the doses as they made their way up the dark street.

"Oi, Gred," whispered Fred, "See them over there? You don't suppose they could give us the directions to the Leaky Cauldron?"

"Where?" asked George.

"There… those three people over there!"

"But they look like Muggles, don't they?"

"Doesn't matter, Muggles don't bite, do they? They just have those shooting-barrel-tiger things, and they missed all the time in that movie Dad showed us." They stumbled in the general direction of the three people for a while before Fred stopped short again.

"Actually, Georgie-boy, don't you think we're lucid enough to Apparate now?"

"More or less. Maybe we should wait another minute or two?"

"I'm too tired to wait."

"Alright then. To the Keaky Laudron we go! Ready, Fred?"

"Ready, George."

Fred and George Weasley Disapparated with a loud crack, and the street was silent, other than the whispers of the three lost kids trying to figure out where to go.


	4. Strangers Years Later

_**A/N: Finally, the last chapter! I figured it needed an epilogue, mostly because I wanted to imagine what Percy would look like with a goatee. Oh, and please review. It's always nice to know that people are actually reading my stuff, whether it's positive feedback or not. Thanks, and may the Force be ever in your favor. – SK**_

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><p>George Weasley had taken the car – a flying Mini Cooper that he'd bought just a few weeks earlier – over to New York for business. Since Weasley's Wizard Wheezes had done so well in England, wholesaling to Zonko's and selling from the main shop itself, George had contacted friends of friends in New York City about possibility of wholesaling some of his products to their joke shop.<p>

It was an exciting prospect, making his company international. He was sure that if Fred had been here, he would have been just as thrilled as he was.

He was walking around the East Village, killing time before his big meeting by window-shopping in all of the Muggle stores. He was starting to understand his father's obsession with electricity: it was amazing to him that all of these gadgets that Muggles used could function without magic.

It was a very busy day, and everyone seemed to be shopping for something or other. Every shop had customers, and most had huge signs up advertising something called "Black Friday". To George, this sounded like a motorcycle gang or a heavy metal band, but it seemed to be some sort of national day of sales. New York is busy in the first place, but on Black Friday it was almost overflowing with people – it was almost as if everybody in the state had crammed into a single city.

Percy Jackson was browsing the shops in the East Village, looking for something to get his mom. She was in bed with the flu, and since he was in the area he figured he'd explore some of the stores and take advantage of the fact that it was Black Friday.

This was a good and a bad thing. It was good because he could get a good deal on almost anything. It was a bad thing because Black Friday is one of the least safe days of the year for demigods. Nobody's quite sure why, but there are always a lot more monsters lurking around on Black Friday than on any other day of the year. Percy was a bit on edge because of this, but figured that he was in such a dense crowd that the odds that a monster would be able to detect him were pretty slim.

Speaking of slim, Percy noticed that a very nice razor was on sale for fifteen bucks in the hardware store across the street. He'd tried out the five-o-clock shadow for a bit, then had a grown a goatee. Now, after being mercilessly teased about his facial hair by at least three of his friends, he'd decided to shave it off and go for the clean look. But for the clean look, he needed a good razor. And there it was, in the window, at fifty percent of its original price.

Percy wove through the crowd and walked into the hardware store while simultaneously searching for his razor and a present for Sally Jackson.

George was standing in front of a Muggle hardware store, fascinated by all of the things they advertised. A special razor guaranteed not to cut you? He'd never heard of anything so ridiculous in his life. Surely, with all their technology, Muggles had designed something that prevented regular razors from nicking you! He chuckled and walked in to see what other things were on sale. A garden rake with an ergonomic grip. A vacuum with "easy-clean trash compartment". A box of extra-solid nails. George noticed that there were rubber duck keychains at the checkout, so he decided to buy one of each kind for his dad. His father loved rubber ducks; it was probably his favorite miscellaneous Muggle item because they were absolutely useless and served no purpose whatsoever. In his mind, that was what made them so brilliant.

He got in line behind a man with jet-black hair and a goatee who was buying the very razor he'd noticed in the window and a box of those extra-solid nails. George thought he looked vaguely familiar, but couldn't quite place him.

Percy had gotten in line at the cashier after finding the razor and a box of extra-solid nails. He hadn't found anything for Sally, but had decided he'd buy her lilies at the little place down the street – they were her favorite. He automatically checked his wrist for the time, then remembered he'd lost his watch ages ago, so he turned around to ask the guy behind him in line if he knew what time it was.

"Hey, sorry," said Percy awkwardly to the redheaded man in a purple suit with six rubber duck keychains in his hand, "Do you happen to know what time it is?" He nodded and shook up his sleeve so he could see the face of his watch.

"Yes, as a matter of fact I do," answered George brightly. "Would you like me to tell you?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure." Percy knew that he was just messing with him.

"Six twenty three."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

Percy had the impression that he knew him from somewhere, but he wasn't sure where exactly. He wasn't an old friend from camp, that was for sure, and he hadn't ever gone to his school. Maybe they'd been on the same bus or subway a few times. Or maybe he was just going crazy.

"Next customer." Percy paid for his razor and nails, feeling very macho. If the stranger with red hair in the purple suit's watch worked, he only had about thirty minutes before the flower shop closed; so he dashed out of the hardware store and wove through the dense crowd to get to the florist in time.

"Next." George handed the cashier his rubber ducks, and she didn't even pay him a second glance. "That'll be five forty." He handed her a five-dollar bill and rummaged around his wallet for American Muggle money, eventually pulling out a dime, a quarter, and a bunch of pennies. The cashier sighed and counted everything, then handed George his ducks and the receipt. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with the piece of paper that she'd given him, so he just stuck it in his pocket and smiled at her before walking out of the hardware store. Maybe he'd give it to Arthur along with the rubber ducks.

Percy made it to the little flower shop with twenty minutes to spare, only to realize that it had gone out of business and had been replaced with a chain called Per Se Flowers. Percy blinked. _Per Se Flowers?_ He peered inside and saw a young woman with a flower crown in her hair at the desk, then walked in. Who knows; maybe she gave discounts to cousins.

George got into his Mini Cooper, started it up and put it on "invisible" so any nearby Muggles wouldn't wonder why it was flying. He pushed the peddle to the metal and shot off into the sky, soaring above all the New York buildings. He then switched on the radio to listen to some Muggle music, and flipped through the stations until finally, after nearly ten minutes, he found something worth listening to. Soon, he was humming along in spite of himself. Then he figured that he no one could hear him all the way up here, so what the heck?

"_I believe I can fly!_" sang George, "_I believe I can touch the sky! I believe I can soar! Catch me going through that open door!_" He sang bad Muggle music to himself for no reason until he got to his future associate's office on Lexington and Park.

A couple hundred feet below the flying car, Percy was buying lilies for his mother at Persephone's flower shop. He couldn't understand why "I Believe I Can Fly" was stuck in his head.


End file.
